Mercedes GP - Inauguration and 1st season

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

Gilgen

Brawn had money for 2009. Honda made sure the team survived for at least one year, As did Bernie Ecclestone by giving the team an advance on their concorde money.
But that was not enough to maintain the like of Zander et al. So alot of people left the team.
Also Stuttgart were looking at ways of going alone, for any number of valid reasons. Spygate, Liegate and then the split of road car ideologies.

Now the underlying speculation of benz involvement.
Mercedes stepped in to provide engines as a front for FOTA. Ferrari also offered engines but Brawn decided on the Benz units.
Once the season got underway the team sported Virgin branding, as the team gained more wins the price of buying the team went north, and Virgin got cold feet and got into bed with Manor GP in August 09. Remember this is all in the backdrop of the credit crunch, where sponsors were extremely hard to find.

This left Brawn with very little option. So he turned to Mercedes and negotiations would only have been seriously active around the time Virgin intimated they wouldnt be doing a deal.

Mercedes had a problem though. They were laying off staff left right and centre as the credit crunch set in. Enter Aabar investemnts(daimler shareholders)who are cash rich and the real reason why Mercedes went racing again.

Without these guys, Mercedes would only be supplier to a BGP002.

And finally, There is the end of year reports which shows where money has been spent. Brawn did not recieve one euro prior to november 2009.
http://www.daimler.com/Projects/c2c/cha ... m_20_F.pdf

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

Marcush

Plc companies do not "give cash" without express consent from sharholders.
this never happened until sharholders agreed the deal in November, due to Aabar taking up the black hole in Mercs own budget.

Glad we can clear this one up.

[segedunum]

Every man and his dog knew that the Mercedes takeover was going to happen months in advance. It was one of the worst kept secrets ever, but you can choose to ignore that if you so wish. That did not proclude private agreements being in place beforehand before any official announcements, and the securing of funding for development for 2010. I know Fry is an idiot, but Brawn would not have entered that deal having to wait until the end of the year for any movement, money and resources to change hands. That's just plain silly.

Why do you think the car sported no sponsorship for the whole year, despite having a lot of TV time, and why the Virgin partnership fizzled into nothing? I mean, I know that team has historically been incompetent with regard to attracting sponsors, but given that they were allegedly short of money and desperately needed it it should all have been a no-brainer.........

[segedunum]

But that was not enough to maintain the like of Zander et al. So alot of people left the team.

Do you have any evidence for that, because that team has tended to turn over head technical staff quite a bit over the years and Zander himself has moved around quite freely?

I know you really, really want to intimate that they lost a ton of technical staff in 2009 because of a lack of money, but that is not what happened. They lost a lot of peripheral staff that they'd acquired during the Honda years (and Toyota certainly didn't have 1000 people working on the car) so their technical department remained intact.

Remember this is all in the backdrop of the credit crunch, where sponsors were extremely hard to find.

Crap. There were teams miles further down the grid than they were that had far, far more sponsors and Brawn were the talk of the year. They certainly weren't in Sauber's position. That's just plain silly, isn't it? There are times when you really do make no logical sense at all.

There is the end of year reports which shows where money has been spent. Brawn did not recieve one euro prior to november 2009.

Proves little. I don't see motorsport mentioned anywhere in there and large companies are a litany of subsidiaries and completely independent separate companies that appear to be part of the group but aren't. It's called accounting.

[747heavy]

Segedunum,
if what you call "the suits getting cold feets" happen, no team will be save.
Winning or not, if the board makes up his mind, that the grass is greener somewhere else, then they will just pull the plug. This happend to championship winning teams (not in F1, but in othe series on a regular basis).
So winning, may help, but it´s no garantee that they will stay in F1.

Claerly, I have no inside knowledge in the matter, and don´t calim to have it, but if Mercedes has a bit of an long(er) term plan with it´s F1 involvment, why should they have helped Fry&Brawn out? So that they can get a better price for there team?
I don´t know what happend, but as for the Sponsor thing, they may just have made the wrong bet.

When they where winning, they hoped to make it big, and sell at the height of the hype.
But Mercedes would have been plain stupid, to buy or agree to buy in June.
They know, that the price would come down, later in the year.
I mean Fry&Brawn got the team basicly for free from Honda, with some cash, to make sure it runs for a while, and Honda is not the one seen to sacking xxx amount of people. S
The same as BMW does with Sauber this year.

We can argue, if it is wrong for Mercedes to want to be in F1 as an all out factory team o.k. - that´s something they will need to decide for themself, if it fit´s their bill.
But the ticket they bought (Brawn GP) to be in F1, is a s cheap as it will get for them - IMHO, compare to the other options.

The past has shown, that Merceds has a bit of stamina, when it comes to their motorsport activities (for better or worse), so I would not be too conerned about it at the moment, they have seen bleaker times (McLaren in 1995 etc.), and still continued.

[segedunum]

Take a look at the teams whose backers have got cold feet versus the teams that are still there. They want results for the money that they put in, and the past few years have shown us that they're not the most rational or patient of people.

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

[....]

Segedunum, I'm fully aware of the timescales an due diligence involved when undertaking an aquisition of this size, as I pointed by saying only when Virgin was out the picture in late July/August did the wheels get fully set in motion!

What you are saying is Mercedes provided more than just engines before the takeover, and that is a just [....].

[marcush.]

i´m with JET here .I cannot see how anyone can signup cheques or bigger sums to a customer!
At that time BrawnGP was client to Mercedes or partner or engineleasepartner whatever you call it ,Brawn received BrooomBroom and had to pay cash to complete the deal.
Maybe Bernie paid the € using up some of the promise dmoney from the constructors pot...
who knows.
But I see no ways how Mercedes COULD have transferred money to Brawn really.Maybe they got a LOI from them and could go to a bank hoping for a credit to bridge the gap ..but still that is not the same as Mercedes handing out the bucks..

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

Marcush,

Not only that, but can you imagine the fallout if Mclaren knew about Mercedes financing Brawn? The implications for Mercedes would be enormous.
Any financial help would have meant to severe the official link between Mclaren and Mercedes including penalties to go with it. This happened but in November 2009. Not before, not after.

Yes they negotiated before that, but negotiations are exactly that, negotiations.

[xpensive]

I find it reasonable to assume that Honda was part of the Daimler-Brawn deal, I doubt very much if they were prepared
not only give away their billion-Euro investment, but sign a check to go with it as well, just like that?

This is why I have a feeling that becoming a factory-team cost the Stuttgart-suits more than meets the eye.

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

I find it reasonable to assume that Honda was part of the Daimler-Brawn deal, I doubt very much if they were prepared
not only give away their billion-Euro investment, but sign a check to go with it as well, just like that?

This is why I have a feeling that becoming a factory-team cost the Stuttgart-suits more than meets the eye.

Not quite with you there xpensive.

Are you saying that Honda left and gave a 100million loan to Brawn on the premise that it would eventually end up in Mercedes hands?

If thats the case, why was Aabar investments required to prop up the deal?

[xpensive]

No, but I think all of the money to support Brawn in 2009 originated from Stuttgart.

[andrew]

It is costing the Stuttgart suits with each race that goes by thanks to the car being duff. New regs next year should help level things put a bit.

Merc reminds me to an extent of when Jaguar took over Stewart. Promises of race wins and wotnot and then ... nothing. A team that was doing ok bought over and destroyed by top heavy management and bean counters.

As for Honda, I think it was just a case of cutting their losses and look to the long term financial benfits of not competing.

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

It is costing the Stuttgart suits with each race that goes by thanks to the car being duff. New regs next year should help level things put a bit.

Merc reminds me to an extent of when Jaguar took over Stewart. Promises of race wins and wotnot and then ... nothing. A team that was doing ok bought over and destroyed by top heavy management and bean counters.

As for Honda, I think it was just a case of cutting their losses and look to the long term financial benfits of not competing.

The Mercedes management is almost exactly the same. By top heavy did you mean the addition of the portly Haug?
Because he is not hands on at all, he is more of a spokesperson dealing largley with German/British media.

As For the bean counters, Mercedes have taken a different route from honda BMW toyota et al and have bought an entire team for £80million.
Maybe in these austere times this should be commended especially as all this talk of cost cutting was around when Mercedes entered.

Personally I think Mercedes are in this for 3 years, they will see the results of this in that time before commiting further.

I want to see what influence Mercedes will have on the car designed entirely under its own ownership. Staff migration, tech knowhow, tangible stuff that happens behind the scenes.

Anyway I hope they win before Germany next year as xpensive has a lovely outfit for me to wear if not!
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[xpensive]

...
As for Honda, I think it was just a case of cutting their losses and look to the long term financial benfits of not competing.

I doubt if Honda was as desperate as paying for the 2009 season to get rid of their investment, why I belive that Brawn GP was a three-way deal, which resulted in a considerable amount of Euros being transfered from Stuttgart to Japan.

The ultimate consequences of the above are probably dawning on said suits as we type.